Robin Good: If you have an iPad and you are looking for a better way to find, discover, browse, search and consume news stories, the new Rockmelt browser for iPads is definitely worth a road test.

Unlike other popular browsers, "rather than showing you a big, empty window--or just whatever site you were looking at the last time you used it--Rockmelt offers up a visual stream of personalized content, culled from friends on Facebook and Twitter, RSS subscriptions, and sites that fall into your designated categories of interest.

Posts, articles, images, and the rest take the form of big, tappable tiles in two endless columns--an infinitely scrolling stream of content.

Touch one of the items, and, when possible, it pops open in a stripped-down reader view.

As you’re checking out that content, you can jump to a full view of the website it’s hosted on, follow links, or just dip back to your stream to find something else to look at."

"Overall, it’s a fairly radical take on what a tablet browser should be, one that starts with the go-anywhere, find-anything utility of the browsers we’re familiar with and grafts a visual, content-curation element on top of it all.

In this sense, the new Rockmelt is sort of like a mash-up of Pulse, Flipboard, and Safari--a browser that’s also a news reader, with a dash of social network to round it out."

Robin Good: NewzSocial is a free iPad curation app which allows you to instantly create topic-specific channels and to easily curate the content stories that you deem appropriate for each.

Curators can work in teams and collaboratively organize one or more news channels.

From the App Store download page: "NewzSocial is a free social news reader app that allows you to follow, create and share broad and niche news streams on your topics of interest.

The app has unique social curation features using which you can tap into your network of ‘topic expert’ friends and get the news you want selected by the experts you know."

A reviewer on the App Store left this comment: "What blew me away is the number of great articles the app has. I just searched for latest fashion trends & got really great articles. With flipboard, after reading 5-7 articles, it's the same stories from yesterday. "

Robin Good: I feel that curated selections of "apps" by a trusted source is definitely an area where people will be willing to pay to get good advice while saving time and money to choose what tools to use on their new iPad.

The new interesting aspect is that the availability of different apps and software has

increased so much that the ability for someone to provide reliable advice and selection of what is really useful and effective becomes by itself a valuable and monetizable service.

"AppStart is the first app to download on your iPad: An app starter kit with all the essential apps you'll ever need.

AppStart takes a fresh and fun approach to teach the average Joe (or insert your name here) how to become more familiar with his/her iPad and apps. NO THIS IS NOT A BORING MANUAL. We’ll fill you on the basic things that everyone should know, and then get you started with the best apps for you.

Throughout the app you’ll find special sections that tell you apps you'll need to turn your iPad into a specific kind of tool. You'll also be given a list of the essentials apps for certain types of user (lawyers, teachers, musicians, moms, dads, etc). If you see something that sounds interesting to you, click it! We’ll give you the exact set of apps to download and you’ll be on your way, no need to scour the top charts in the App Store."

Robin Good: If you are looking for the best alternative options when it comes to monitor, read, search and organize your preferred RSS feeds via your iPhone or iPad, this newly updated collection from Appadvice.com has probably everything you need and more.

From its introduction: "...When viewed as a whole, the differences between RSS Readers on the iPad aren’t that huge, simply because they all display content from an RSS feed source and many use a similar two column layout (feeds on one side, articles on the other).

The major differences can be seen in the rising importance of “social” RSS readers, or apps that take an active role in finding RSS feeds for you to read by leveraging your Internet presence or expressed interests.

Most of the rest of the RSS apps require a user to have a Google Reader account to pull feeds from, meaning that they mainly differ in their presentation and implementation of your Google Reader feeds. The choice of RSS reader may be a personal one, but there are a few standout apps in the genre you should be aware of before you decide."

Excerpted from the original article on GigaOM: "While video lovers have gotten more and more social services that serve up interesting clips from friends, it’s still not easy to construct a more comprehensive look at video news by topic. That’s the gap that New York state startup Newslook is trying to fill with a new iPad app that allows users to construct channels of their favorite news subjects on the fly.

Newslook is now getting even more into the consumer video space with its first iPad app. The app, which will debut at the paidContent 2012 conference Wednesday, allows users to build their own channel using video from more than 50 sources including the AP, Reuters, Bloomberg, National Geographic and others.

Newslook takes in hundreds of videos each day from its sources and applies a bunch of metadata to a smaller number of clips, putting them into various taxonomies that can be searched. Users who look for Barack Obama or The Hunger Games can pull up a stream of professional videos that are tied to the topic and can create an instant channel based on that topic.

Newslook adds more than 150 new videos a day that have been hand selected and tagged with metadata. In addition to search, there’s also tabs for finding top videos and clips that are trending and featured. Users who view one video can also see a list of relevant metadata terms to construct a similar channel. And they can share their videos on Facebook, with Twitter and Pinterest support coming later..."

Robin Good: The new Storify news curation tool is now available for the iPad, bringing the ease of drag and drop to the curation world.

"Founded in 2009, this seven person company has done a remarkable job surviving the market and being one of the major players in the world of content curation.

...

[Storify has been adopted by] 22 out of top 25 news sites in the United States...

Just like Twitter has their trending topics, Storify’s service allows people to keep track of the relevant social media trending topics. Users are able to tell their own story about these major events (like Whitney Houston or Greece’s economic downfall or even Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime performance), and embed them on their own website.

Be your own crowd-sourced storyteller, by dragging in tweets, status updates, photos, and videos from a variety of social networks in order to help you create a better story and telling experience."

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.